The shooter Team Fortress 2 by Valve is already over 13 years old, but it still has what it takes. This weekend, more players logged into the game than ever before and set a new record.
This is what happened with Team Fortress 2: The popular shooter from Valve was released nearly 14 years ago in October 2007 and surprisingly gained momentum despite its age and lack of significant content updates. In fact, the number of active players has increased so much that Team Fortress 2 set a new record of over 150,000 active players.
According to the statistical site SteamCharts, the shooter maintained a steady range of about 50,000 to 70,000 active players in 2020 and slowly began to gain traction at the start of 2021. Thus, Team Fortress 2 has been played by an average of 80,000 to 100,000 players in recent months.
The influx of newcomers and the return of veterans resulted in a new record of over 150,000 concurrent players, securing Team Fortress 2 a spot in the top 5 of the most played games on Steam – according to SteamCharts, it landed just above GTA V.
What could be the reason for this? On June 22, Team Fortress 2 saw its first update in over 100 days, which introduced new cosmetic items to the game. Valve had stopped actively providing the shooter with larger content chunks back in late 2019. Therefore, the new Summer 2021 Cosmetic Case primarily consists of community creations:
- 18 items contributed by the community
- 6 new effects created by community members
Additionally, according to the patch notes (via teamfortress.com), the security measures have also been improved to help combat bots. Since its release, Team Fortress 2 has been struggling with botters and cheaters, who primarily terrorized honest players in April 2020.
In the dedicated reddit thread, opinions vary regarding whether these measures have actually been effective. Some users are convinced that the new player record is due to bot inflation.
However, others report relatively “bot-free” matches and that only a small portion of the 150,000 active players are actually bots. This is argued based on the player numbers on SteamCharts. User SmrtassUsername writes: “When I saw the small drop in player numbers an hour after the update, […] it confirmed my suspicions. Most people overestimate the number of bots [in Team Fortress 2].”
Have you checked out Team Fortress 2 in recent days? How was your gaming experience? Do you find that the number of bots has stayed the same or has the gameplay improved? Let us know in the comments.
